We’ve collected all the The Dark Artifices snippets that Cassandra Clare. We’ll continue to add more as she continues to release them.
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[accordion title=”TDA Snippet 15″ load=”show”]Released 1/9/15 – Lady Midnight
Mark stepped out. The elegant lines of the suit seemed to sweep upward, making Mark appear taller, more polished. For the first time since his return every bit of the feral faerie child in him appeared to have been brushed away like cobwebs. He looked human. Like someone who’d always been human.
“Why do you bite your nails?” he said.
Julian, who hadn’t even been conscious that he was gnawing on the side of his thumb —the satisfying pain of skin between his teeth, the metal of the blood in his mouth — dropped his hands into his lap. “Bad habit.”
“People do that when they’re stressed,” said Mark. “Even I know that.” His fingers scrabbled uselessly at his tie. He frowned down at it.
Julian got to his feet and went over to his brother, taking the loops of the tie in his hands. He couldn’t remember who had taught him how to knot a tie. Malcolm, he thought. It had almost certainly been Malcolm.
“But what do you have to be stressed about, little brother?” Mark said. “You weren’t carried away by Sebastian Morgenstern. You’ve spent your life here. Not that the life of a Shadowhunter isn’t stressful, but why are you the one with the bloody hands?”
Julian’s hands faltered for a moment. “You don’t know everything about me, Mark. Just like I’m willing to bet I don’t know everything about you.”
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[accordion title=”TDA Snippet 14″ load=”hide”]Released December 2014
“I don’t know,” Mark said, looking down at his own long pale fingers tangled in the little boy’s brown curls. “He just – Julian left, and Tavvy fell asleep on my lap.”
He sounded amazed, wondering.
“Of course he did,” Cristina said. “He’s your brother. He trusts you.”
“Nobody trusts a Hunter,” Mark said.
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[accordion title=”TDA Snippet 13″ load=”hide”]Released December 2014 – Lady Midnight
“Have I?” asked Mark. “Is this my home?” He looked over at Emma. “I can say this to you because you are not a Blackthorn. You do not have Blackthorn blood running through your veins. I have been in the land of Faerie for years and it is a place where mortal blood is turned to fire. It is a place of beauty and terror beyond what can be imagined here. I have ridden with the Wild Hunt. I have carved a clear path of freedom among the stars and outrun the wind. And now I am asked to walk upon the earth again.”
“You belong where you’re loved,” Emma said. It was something her father had said, something she had always believed. She belonged here because Jules loved her and the children loved her. “Were you loved in Faerie?”
A shadow seemed to come down over Mark’s eyes, like curtains closing in a dark room.
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[accordion title=”TDA Snippet 12″ load=”hide”]Released December 2014
“Hello? This is Clary Fairchild.”
“Clary? It’s me, Emma.”
“Oh, Emma, hi! I haven’t heard from you in ages. My mom says thanks for the wedding flowers, by the way. She wanted to send a note but Luke whisked her away on a honeymoon to Tahiti.”
“Tahiti sounds nice.”
“It probably is — Jace, what are you doing with that thing? There is no way it’ll fit.”
“Is this a bad time?”
“What? No! Jace is trying to drag a trebuchet into the training room. Alec, stop helping him.”
“What’s a trebuchet?”
“It’s a huge catapult.”
“What are they going to use it for?”
“I have no idea. Alec, you’re enabling! You’re an enabler!”
“Maybe it is a bad time.”
“I doubt there’ll be a better one. Is something wrong? Is there anything I can do?”
“I think we have your cat.”
“What?”
“Your cat. Big fuzzy Blue Persian? Always looks angry? Julian says it’s your cat. He says he saw it at the New York Institute. Well, saw him. It’s a boy cat.”
“Church? You have Church? But I thought — well, we knew he was gone. We thought Brother Zachariah took him. Isabelle was annoyed, but they seemed to know each other. I’ve never seen Church actually like anyone like that.”
“I don’t know if he likes anyone here. He bit Julian twice. Oh, wait. Julian says he likes Ty. He’s asleep on Ty’s bed.”
“How did you wind up with him?”
“Someone rang our front doorbell. Diana, she’s our tutor, went down to see what it was. Church was in a cage on the front step with a note tied to it. It said For Emma. This is Church, a longtime friend of the Carstairs. Take care of this cat and he will take care of you. —J.”
“Brother Zachariah left you a cat.”
“But I don’t even really know him. And he’s not a Silent Brother any more.”
“You may not know him, but he clearly knows you.”
“What do you think the J stands for?”
“His real name. Look, Emma, if he wants you to have Church, and you want Church, you should keep him.”
“Are you sure? The Lightwoods —“
‘They’re both standing here nodding. Well, Alec is partially trapped under a trebuchet, but he seems to be nodding.”
“Jules says we’d like to keep him. We used to have a cat named Oscar, but he died, and, well, Church seems to be good for Ty’s nightmares.”
“Oh, honey. I think, really, he’s Brother Zachariah’s cat. And if he wants you to have him, then you should.”
“Why does Brother Zachariah want to protect me? It’s like he knows me, but I don’t know why he knows me.”
“I don’t exactly know … But I know Tessa. She’s his — well, girlfriend seems not the right word for it. They’ve known each other a long, long time. I have a feeling they’re both watching over you.”
“That’s good. I have a feeling we’re going to need it.”
“Emma — oh my God. The trebuchet just crashed through the floor. I have to go. Call me later.”
“But we can keep the cat?”
“You can keep the cat.”
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[accordion title=”TDA Snippet 11″ load=”hide”]Released November 2014
“You’ve got a lot of responsibility now,” Jace said to Julian. “You’ll have to make sure Emma winds up with a guy who deserves her.”
Julian was strangely white-faced. Maybe he was feeling the effects of the ceremony, Emma thought. It had been strong magic; she still felt it sizzling through her blood like champagne bubbles. But Jules looked as if he’d been slapped.
“What about me?” Emma said, quickly. “Don’t I have to make sure Jules winds up with someone who deserves him?”
“Absolutely. I did it for Alec, Alec did it for me — well, actually, he hated Clary at first, but he came around.”
“I bet you didn’t like Magnus much, either,” said Julian, still with the same odd, stiff look on his face.
“Maybe not,” said Jace, “but I never would have said so.”
“Because it would have hurt Alec’s feelings?” Emma asked.
“No,” said Jace, “because Magnus would have turned me into a hat rack.”
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[accordion title=”TDA Snippet 10″ load=”hide”]Released November 2014
“Loved?” he said in a cold voice. “Do you no longer? Remember, half-blood, I know that you can lie.”
Mark flicked his eyes up. He saw the storm in those eyes, but behind the storm he saw two boys as small as stars in a distant sky, locked together under a blanket.
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[accordion title=”TDA Snippet 9″ load=”hide”]Released November 2014
“I know things haven’t been exactly right between us since I got back from England,” he said. “And I don’t know if it’s because I’m a little jealous of Cristina, or a lot jealous of —“
“JULIAN,” Emma said.
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[accordion title=”TDA Snippet 8″ load=”hide”]Released October 2014
“Emma —“
“I’m calling.” Emma lunged for her phone.
“No!” Julian said, forcefully enough to stop her. “You know we can’t tell anyone. About Mark —“
“You’re not going to bleed to death in a car for Mark!”
“No,” he said, looking at her. His eyes were eerily green-blue, the only bright color in the dark interior of the car. “You’re going to fix me.”
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[accordion title=”TDA Snippet 7″ load=”hide”]Released September 2014
“Do I?” Diana leaned back in her chair, tapping her pencil against the back of her right hand, where the Rune of Sight was inked. Every Shadowhunter had a Voyance rune on their dominant hand, allowing them to see through glamours. Emma’s was on her left. “Well, if I know what you did, and you know what you did, maybe you should tell me what your punishment should be?”
“I should have to take care of a box of kittens,” Emma said immediately. “Definitely a box of kittens. You know how cruel kittens are, with their tiny little claws and terrible attitudes.”
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[accordion title=”TDA Snippet 6″ load=”hide”]Released September 2014
She had wondered, when he’d looked into her eyes and said that he’d had to learn to make do without mirrors in the Wild Hunt, whose eyes he’d been looking into for all those years. Who’d been his mirror.
Now she knew.
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[accordion title=”TDA Snippet 5″ load=”hide”]Released August 2014
Now he looked at her sideways. “You don’t think I look like a Shadowhunter any more?”
“Do you want to?” Cristina asked.
“I want to look like my family,” Mark said. “I cannot have the Blackthorn coloring, but I can look as much like Nephilim as possible. Besides, if I wish to be part of the investigation, I cannot stand out.”
Cristina held back from telling Mark that there was no world in which he didn’t stand out. “I can make you look like a Shadowhunter.”
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[accordion title=”TDA Snippet 4″ load=”hide”]Released August 2014
Cristina looked after Emma, her hand going to the pendant at her own throat. It was silver, in the shape of a circle with a rose inside it. The rose was wrapped around with thorny briars. Words were written in Latin on the back: she didn’t need to look at them to know them. She’d known them all her life. Blessed be the Angel my strength who teaches my hands to war, and my fingers to fight. The rose for Rosales, the words for Raziel, the Angel who had created the Shadowhunters a thousand years ago. Cristina had always thought Emma fought for her parabatai and for revenge, while she fought for family and faith. But maybe it was all the same thing: maybe it was all love, in the end.
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[accordion title=”TDA Snippet 3″ load=”hide”]Released June 2014
Mark whirled on them. His eyes were blind, unseeing. “You bring the twins in front of me and you kill them over and over. My Ty, he doesn’t understand why I can’t save him. You bring me Dru and when she laughs to see the fairytale castle, all ringed round with hedges, you throw her against the thorns until their pierce her small body. And you bid me wash in Octavian’s blood for the blood of an innocent child is magic under the Hill.”
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[accordion title=”TDA Snippet 2″ load=”hide”]Released June 2014
Emma swallowed. She was remembering Julian, two years ago, standing in the overlapping circles of fire where the parabatai ritual was performed. The look on his face as they each stepped into the central circle and the fire rose up around them, and he unbuttoned his shirt to let her touch the stele to his skin and carve the rune that would bind them together for their whole lives. She knew if she just reached out now, she could touch it, touch the rune cut into his shoulder, the rune she had put there …
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[accordion title=”TDA Snippet 1″ load=”hide”]Released June 2014
“Yeah,” he said, eyelashes lowering as his gaze traced the movement of her fingers. “It hurt me being away from you. It feels like there’s a hook dug in under my ribs, and there’s something pulling at the other end. Like I’m tethered to you, no matter the distance.”
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Summary (from Cassandra Clare’s website):
Los Angeles. It’s been five years since the events of the Mortal Instruments when Nephilim stood poised on the brink of oblivion and Shadowhunter Emma Carstairs lost her parents. After the blood and violence she witnessed as a child, Emma has dedicated her life to to discovering exactly what it was that killed her parents and getting her revenge.
Raised in the Los Angeles Institute with the Blackthorn family, Emma is paired as a parabatai with her best friend, Julian Blackthorn. A series of murders in the city catch her attention — they seem to have the same characteristics as the deaths of her parents. Could the murderer be the same person? And her attention isn’t the only one caught: someone has been murdering Downworlders as well. The Fair Folk make a deal with the Institute: if the Blackthorns and Emma will investigate the killings, they’ll return Mark Blackthorn to his home. The catch: they have only two weeks to find the killers. Otherwise it’s open war between faeries and Nephilim.
The Shadowhunters of the Institute must race against time to catch the killers, even as they begin to suspect the involvement of those closest to them. At the same time, Emma is falling in love with the one person in the world she’s absolutely forbidden by Shadowhunter Law to love. Set against the glittering backdrop of present-day Los Angeles, Emma must learn to trust her head and her heart as she investigates a demonic plot that stretches from the warlock-run nightclubs of the Sunset Strip to the enchanted sea that pounds the beaches of Santa Monica.